What's the worst business trip you've ever taken?

Those that saw me this weekend via Facebook and two Arsians in person knew of my terrible week in Vegas. Some of the highlights:

- I was easily doing the work of two people setting up, maintaining, attendee registration, and breaking down IT in an exhibit booth, press room, speaker's office, staff office, main events, and social media lounge for a 3-day conference attended by 1200 people.- The social media lounge showed up out of nowhere 4 days before the conference with a list of demands when they had over a year to plan the damn thing.- I had to coordinate between a Vegas hotel, rental company, shipping company, and a staff of about 20 people.- My shifts were 6am-7pm every day.- While I had bronchitis. I had a high fever, stuffed up head, wheezing lungs (and I'm an asthmatic), and thick snot constantly running. I could barely breathe and I really thought I would have to hospitalize myself but the fear of hospitals in general kept me away.

Literally no one else could do my job, and I was alone in a city some 2000 miles away from home base. I was *miserable* but I did a good job, thanks in part to people in the third bullet item being both helpful and competent, and the Mandalay Bay gift shop having an unusual amount of cold and cough remedies than I would have expected.

But this... this was not the worst trip I have ever taken. What was yours?

When I read the topic, I somehow thought "must be Vegas". I'm really sorry for you, though, sounds awful.

My worst business trips weren't even bad at all. I remember one to Graz, Austria. It were basically two very taxing days, with only 6h sleep at night, which is about 2h less than I need. I was constantly in company and eating in fine restaurants, but whatever I ordered was delicious but a third of what I had hunger for. At the first day I went to bed and hoped for brunch the next day, which was again at some restaurant too fine to serve real food. The rest of the day was very busy and dinner was child sized again. When I finally came back to the hotel I felt like starving. Room service was not available anymore, the reception closed and there was no food to be had via vending machines or anything. So I went to the central station 500m away only to find out literally everything was closed there. About half an hour later I had explored the area around the hotel thoroughly without finding food. I was really hungry and really really pissed.

This was a few years back. Shop-floor PC hardware refresh and software rollout in a ~4.5 million square-foot factory. The company I was with at the time chintzed out on the hotel and the rental car (five dudes, seven hours, and all their belongings in a Nissan Sentra). My coworkers only ever wanted to eat Burger King. I was forced to tag along for lack of anything better, and had pretty awful diarrhea by the end of the week. This is not good while working in a facility of such size, especially when you're walking everywhere. The EMI off the welding robots degaussed my hotel key and credit/ATM cards on the first day (the former easily dealt with, the latter less so).

But the environment was reasonably interesting and the people who worked there generally quite friendly. So it wasn't all bad.

It sucked at the time, but I once found out a few hours from departure that I was covering for someone at a client presentation in Delhi. I was in New York at the time. I had something booked back in NYC that I couldn't cancel, so I flew over there (15 hours), went to the hotel and then the meeting (9 hours) and then went right back to the airport to go home (15 hours, plus a few hours in the lounge). I then went to my meeting a few hours after I landed.

The legend of the trip became bigger than the trip itself, though, both within the company (with my employees and bosses) and with several clients (including the one I met with on my arrival). Suffering through the trip without complaint was ultimately worth it.

Worst trip: Atlanta but mostly because I was assigned to something I had never done and apparently am terrible at. It was basically a week of manual labor and building something ridiculous and completely beyond my very limited ability with basic tools. In addition, other projects were bugging me the entire time so not only do I suck at building stuff, and quite visibly was not happy doing it 16 hours a day, the two other guys who do that shit all the time complained about me sucking when they got back to HQ.

A lot of people will say things like: "I'll mop the floor if they want me to, it's their dime" However I can't smile my way out of being lousy at construction.

Weirdest trip: Tuba City AZ (it would be the worst trip except that I went to the Grand Canyon while I was out there. Eating at the same two mediocre restaurants for 3 weeks did suck.

My worst was back in 1998. It would be a frickin' novel to go over it again, but some of the highlights of that trip. The purpose was to learn a software called GeoTEL, a call center routing software. It was a certified training class with an exam at the end that lasted 5 days.

- The ATM at Logan airport destroyed my ATM card. It got caught in the rollers and shredded the magnetic strip.- The class was located in Chelmsford, Mass and I was told by the class "a suburb of Boston." It was actually 36 miles away, and when I arrived at Logan (which was under massive renovation that year), no cab would take me there due to some ruling airport cabs could only go to certain places. I called my hotel in a panic, and they sent down a shuttlebus which didn't get there for hours.- My company didn't pay for a rental vehicle, so I was stuck at this Holiday Inn across from a large Chinese food restaurant which I had been told by many locals "never eat there." There was no local place to eat except the Holiday Inn, which had food prices that blew out my $30/day stipend, and so I was forced to eat one meal a day. - The town had no taxi service. Thankfully, I got a ride from a sympathetic GeoTEL employee.- The class had minimum requirements: you had to manage multiple call centers (I managed 13), know Windows NT 4.0 really well, have advanced knowledge of MS SQL, and some basic sysadmin skills. Out of the 20 people in the class, I was 1 of 5 who met these. 5 of the students were actually GeoTEL employees learning how to teach the class, and the other 10 were either sent by their company woefully unprepared, or took the class "to get out of work for a week on the company dime." - The teacher was not very effective in maintaining his class. After the first day, most of those unprepared students just started talking amongst themselves, making cell phone calls, IMing each other, and generally disrupting the class. The 5 GeoTEL employees were constantly called out of class to return to their desk because of some work-related thing. It was very distracting and the teacher seemed overwhelmed and flustered. "Can you PLEASE stop talking back there???" He should have tossed the lot out and focused on the 5 of us who really wanted to learn, but he didn't want to be the "bad guy..."- By the end of the 4th day, it was apparent we were way behind. He said that due to the fact we were behind, and most of the class had flights leaving before the exam, he was going to just make it an open session, and reschedule the class. The company sent a very apologetic note to my boss, explaining what had happened.- My flight back was almost canceled due to a huge summer storm. I was put on the wrong flight, taken off at the very last minute, almost detained by airport security because the stupid agent wanding me was too close to the metal rim of a table, put on the right flight which almost didn't take off because of some middle school band trip snafu, and I was stuck on a Boston => DC flight in turbulent weather with middle school band geek girls screaming and running around like hyperactive farm animals.- The last insult was that my boss did not accept the GeoTEL excuse, stating it should have taken command of the class, and wasted $1300 of company money to goof off.

Not really. I think I got assigned the same thing two other times and did significantly better but I was never more than minimally adequate at it. I think the second time I accidentally dinged the wall in a pretty visible spot and we had to fill it in and paint a bit to cover it up. The third time I think one of the power cables cracked, requiring some electrical tape, which I don't think was my fault but they definitely acted like it was.

I did manage to put a roof rack on my car without help but I would never try to build another one of those things again. In terms of the shit I got for sucking at it, I would have been better off just telling my manager "no".

- I was easily doing the work of two people setting up, maintaining, attendee registration, and breaking down IT in an exhibit booth, press room, speaker's office, staff office, main events, and social media lounge for a 3-day conference attended by 1200 people.- My shifts were 6am-7pm every day.

I'm sure you realize this, but you really need to get more help for these kinds of events from your company. When I saw your Vegas thread in the Lounge about working those hours, it was obvious you were going to be overworked. Is the issue that your company wants to be cheap and not pay for another resource to go out with you, or do you over-volunteer and not ask for help?

My worst business trip? A trip to Europe to select marble & limestone for one of my projects

Sunday Night - depart Hong KongMonday Morning - arrive Milan 8am, 3 hr car journey to Carrara. Lunch, proceed up the mountain to select marble. Back to hotel, dinner by the beach / back to hotel to sleepTuesday - 9 AM, continue looking at stone, noon - head off to Forte de Marmi 30min away as someone wanted to do some shopping - quick lunch. 2 PM - head off to Milan. Fly to Lisbon, Portugal - arrive hotel 9pm for dinner / bed.Wednesday - 2hr car trip to Quarry in Vila Viscosa - look at limestone. Lunch, 2hrs back to Lisbon, free afternoon / evening.Thursday - up at 5am for 7am flight from Lisbon back to Milan. Arrive Milan ~ 10am and check in for 1pm flight back to HKG. Get on plane with 10min to spare since someone needed to get their Tax Refund nd the line in Milan is freaking long with only 2 counters - Arrive back in HKG.

Great Food and the long haul sections were business class but holy shit I was beat after that trip. Insanity. Last time I did this trip it was spread over 7 days which was much better.

- I was easily doing the work of two people setting up, maintaining, attendee registration, and breaking down IT in an exhibit booth, press room, speaker's office, staff office, main events, and social media lounge for a 3-day conference attended by 1200 people.- My shifts were 6am-7pm every day.

I'm sure you realize this, but you really need to get more help for these kinds of events from your company. When I saw your Vegas thread in the Lounge about working those hours, it was obvious you were going to be overworked. Is the issue that your company wants to be cheap and not pay for another resource to go out with you, or do you over-volunteer and not ask for help?

We have 6-7 of these events a year. We have 10 people to man them as IT across three departments (desktop support, networking, sysadmin). In this case, this event was definitely a two-person job, but it used to be a lot smaller. Like about 500 people or less, with about 3-4 rooms. Now we have over 1200, with 7 rooms, some of them like the "social media lounge" and that asshole who made all those demands 4 days before the conference, and exhibit booth, which was so poorly planned I had to arrange for stuff to get done because no one was doing it. Given last week's events, everyone on the planning side is going to pressure my boss to at least 2 IT per conference of over 1000. Now we have a huge, 10,000+ conference this June, and they are sending 4 people, but in our IT team that's going to be crippling. Even two people gone for a week can put a dent in most departments, but our growth in this area has exploded in recent years.

Thankfully, our AV is now outsourced, and soon, so will our registration, which are both huge parts of it.

Close escape a few years ago - I nearly missed my own honeymoon due to the Icelandic volcano. Was working in Germany when the news broke, and with flights grounded, I managed to grab one of the very last Eurostar tickets going back to London that evening, then took four train journeys in rapid succession from the Ruhr to Brussels, then stood in line for 2 hours at Brussels waiting to get on the train, which left very late. I pictured people clinging to the outside.

I did a week of work between the wedding and the honeymoon, and my wife made it clear that she, at least, planned to go, so I had better figure out a way of getting over there. I was preparing to investigate options such as U-boat, hot-air balloon, and giant catapult while refreshing the Eurostar page every 15 seconds.

It was worse for my co-worker from another department, who had brought a temp with her over from the UK to Germany, missed out on the Eurostar tickets (I offered to book them one after I booked mine, but I was lucky, and they weren't), and tried to get back by ferry. However, the temp was too "scared" to take the boat over the English Channel - some kind of phobia - and my co-worker didn't feel able to leave her there.

I had a trip last year that really taught me the value of non-stop flights, and to prioritize that aspect over many others, particularly on short business trips. I was flying San Francisco -> Denver -> Minneapolis, but the incoming plane for my first leg was significantly delayed. We ended up in Denver about an hour and a half late, having missed my connecting flight, and then I had the pleasure of standing in the Customer Service line for something like two hours, while simultaneously on the phone on hold with their Customer Service line. Ultimately, in the airline's infinite wisdom they booked me on a late flight on to Chicago that night, and then an early flight to Minneapolis from there the next morning.

By the time I landed in Chicago it was nearly 1 AM, and then I had to find my way around the deserted airport to the hotel shuttle to get to my free hotel room. Checked into the hotel about 2 AM... and in order to get the shuttle back to the terminal for my 6:30 flight I had to be up and out of there by 5 AM. Oh, and IIRC I wasn't allowed to pull my checked bag out of the airport system, so all I had was my carry-on computer bag and the little pack of toiletries that the airline gave me. Not the most pleasant night, nor the next day.

Can't say I've had any truly horrible work trips, but one of the more interesting was my trip to Tunisia a few months after the revolution in 2011. I was the only one that volunteered and didn't refuse to go.

* I arrived in Tunis and learned that the garbage men were on strike.* Part of the time our customer was on strike so our local reseller/partner bribed the guards so that we could work. Ended up working in a shoddy, dirty server room. Probably the world's only server room in which people smoked.* On the last day there, we were having lunch in central Tunis when the largest demonstrations since the revolution started. We, along with countless others, quickly fled the city center. Apparently tear gas was being used not far from where we had lunch. While driving away I saw riot police assemble and a police Sprinter almost run over some people. Later that day the demonstration were shown on the news.

Other interesting things I've experienced:* Arrived in Islamabad early Monday morning. The taxi to the hotel had to spend over an hour circling around until we were allowed to the hotel as Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, was also staying there. There were three consecutive security checkpoints you had to pass through until you could enter the hotel. We were working at night there, and sometimes I had to exit and enter the hotel through the employee entrance. The guards at the hotel and at the customer all had what I guess were AK-47s.* In Syria one security guard found out I was German and discreetly raised his right arm. I did not know how to react. So I didn't,* Was attacked and almost bitten by street dogs in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

Back in the mid 90's, I would fly out to Silicon Valley for ~2 weeks out of every month. I was turning up all the IT gear (servers, cabling, inet, WAN links, PBX, etc) for a new startup my company was spinning off. I was young, and bucking for a promotion so I didn't want to fail.

However, because I was "just" IT, our in-house travel agent started using me as a guinea pig. They didn't like how much the hotels cost...so they'd send me to that absolute cheapest, dingiest, run-down pieces of shit motels you can imagine...then ask me how I liked it.

I'm no wilting flower when it comes to things, so I normally just sucked it up. Usually, I'd end up at a run down Days Inn or slightly worse...but even then they tried to find cheaper accomodations for me. I ended up staying in a number of shitty little drive-up motels all up and down El Camino Real.

One time, as I was just falling asleep, I heard a loud crash in the room behind my head...and then screaming and more crashes. I could feel the walls shaking...I got up and leaned out my door, when I heard a woman's voice screaming for help...so I rushed into the room to call 911. I got redirected to the front desk, and they told me 911 had already been called, and to stay in my room. (estranged ex boyfriend, the woman had warned the front desk something like this might happen). She ended up being mostly okay, apparently...and the rest of trip passed without incident.

I complained to the travel agent about it though, after I returned home.

Next trip? I walked into a place that was wayyy sketchier than the previous place...and they didn't even have a reservation on record. I had my print out which showed the room had been pre-paid...their name and everything, but he had no rooms left. He told me to go down to the next hotel, same owner, and they'd put me up there.

That "hotel" was a single line of 6 rooms. An office with an actual stained-wife-beater-wearing attendant (owner), who lived in the room behind the front office. He checked me in. I got to my room, and it didn't even have a deadbolt...just a twisty lock, that didn't. It was filthy. It had a little black and white TV, hooked up to nothing. I decided right then and there I was calling my travel agent and insisting she move me to somewhere better.

Yeah, no dialtone. I had to go give the guy a $10 deposit to activate the phone.

I couldn't get ahold of the agent...so I called my boss, who was the new CEO of this venture. He pre-paid a room for me at the Westin for the rest of my trip, and said I could have room service for dinner every night if I wanted.

I wanted.

(the pre-pay thing was because I was still in the very beginning of rebuilding my credit, and I didn't have a credit card yet)

A few years back, I was sent to visit our offices in the Florida Keys (wait, it DOES get worse).I was sent with another employee, a recent hire who stated that they were "Cisco Certified"

Said employee invited their SO along, and they rented their own car, which left me driving the car "we" had rented for the two of us. And then our host, driving HIS car. So far, so good.Flew into Key West, then made our way from there, all the way to Miami, visiting our multiple offices along the way.

Only catch. The "SO" had to drive.. don't ask why.

But he had a phobia of driving over water.

This is the Florida Keys.....

So at EVERY SINGLE BRIDGE between Key West, and Miami, all three cars had to pull over, while the co-worker and SO did fire drill and switched places. Coworker would drive over the bridge, then we'd all pull over again while they switched back. At the next bridge (sometimes seemingly about 45 seconds later), we'd repeat the process.

Plenty of other things went wrong on that trip, but MAN... I've never hated a trip to the Keys that badly.

Mine starts with a brief history. It was my first job out of college. I was living with my mom until I saved up enough to get my own place in the city. By coincidence, a girl from my high school hired on a few months after I started. Like me, she'd just moved back to our hometown after graduating college, and like me, she was living with her parents. So I figured to be friendly, I'd invite her over for dinner on Friday. I figured we'd chat about high school, how she liked college, why we ended up in this job, etc., and that would be it. By a coincidence that would soon work out nicely for me, my mom was out of town for the weekend.

This will sound like BS but it 100% true - I had absolutely no intention of anything romantic happening. She was way out of my league and we weren't that close before. Like the complete ignoramus I am, I was oblivious to the notion of her having any motivations of her own. I made a nice penne a la vodka and thought I'd be all sophisticated and picked up a cheap bottle or two of red. So, imagine my surprise after dinner when she suggests we have another glass of wine and start a movie....

<use your imagination >

I know, you're probably thinking "there is neither 'worst' nor 'trip' in the story so far - where is this going?". Where, indeed. Carry on, intrepid reader. Carry on.

The next thing I know, my alarm is blaring at me at 5:00 AM. Cruel, cruel reality shatters the dream I've been living for the past ten hours of food, wine, and... yeah, that. LOTS of that. Excellent, sticky, delectable THAT. With a girl I'd probably fantasized about in this very bed not five years before. Head pounding in a way that exquisitely painful way only red wine can do. Pants go on; shirt goes on; suitcase is crammed with oddly matched pairs of socks and probably not enough clean underwear. "Whasszzzzd...?" she mutters, face eerily lit by the clock on the nightstand. "There's coffee and eggs in the kitchen. My mom won't be back until tomorrow, so make yourself at home and stay as long as you want. I'll be back soon." "K...".

And off to the airport I went. Destination? Bumfuck nowhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In December. On a Saturday. Because in a scene almost exactly out of Office Space, at 4:00 on Friday as I was packing up to start dinner for my friend, "Lundburg" came by my desk to tell me that $client had ZOMGURGENT!!!!1! need for one of us to be at their warehouse to observe a physical inventory. And because I was the low man on the totem pole, that meant me.

As the small plane shuddered onto the runway in the frozen gloom, I wistfully watched the whirling snowflakes. And I envisioned the beautiful woman, naked in my bed, fifteen hundred miles away.

On my last trip to Syria, I managed to get diarrhea. And no, it wasn't the street food. I suspect it was the medium-rare steak I had.So I'm working on site in Homs and obviously they only had squat toilets. Not only was there no toilet paper, there was almost no running water.

My worst was being stationed in Okinawa, Japan, and then being one of two that were sent to Gainesville, FL (the trip alone sucked the life out of me) for two weeks to learn a mainframe-based check printing system from http://www.barrsystems.com/

Mine's pretty weak alongside what everyone has has posted, but here it is:

My labmate submits a paper to a random workshop running alongside some upcoming academic conference. It gets accepted, but he's unable to go, so I'm asked to present it in his stead. I know the work reasonably well, and I generally like the sort of stuff one does at conferences - talking about each others' research, building relationships, etc.

For reasons of time and cost, I only plan on being there for the day the workshop is actually running, so no chance to see any of the talks in the main conference.

It turns out the workshop was setup up to be much more narrowly focused on the interests of a small cabal of mostly late-career researchers (stuff built on their long-past 'triumphs') than its publicity suggested. After my presentation, their reaction was mostly dismissive - "That doesn't fit in here". A few of their students and other younger researchers were at least more interested in learning and sharing than drawing boundaries, so whatever.

I go to the airport the next day to catch my flight home. Turns out American Airlines pilots are in some sort of labor dispute with management. They're not striking, but some fraction of them apparently decided to initiate a guerrilla job action on their own. Of of the pilots for my flight from MSP -> ORD simply doesn't show up. No call-in, no saying he's unfit to fly. Simply doesn't appear.

The gate agents scramble around for a bit to see if there's a suitable replacement pilot on hand, and eventually conclude that there isn't. So, they tell us, we'll have a pilot when the next flight departing from Chicago can get to us. In the mean time, line up to do the rebooking dance based on expected arrival time.

The schedule from Chicago to Champaign sucked pretty badly then (only slightly less so now), and there was a 6 hour gap between successive flights. I got to O'Hare about an hour into that gap. It turns out that bus and train schedules work out such that any alternatives I might take will get me back home an hour or more after the eventual flight. So, I'm stuck waiting it out at O'Hare. With pretty much no internet connection, having exhausted my reading material, and not really liking anything in the book store.

I survived the boredom, and eventually made it home. Only to then have to deal with the expense report paperwork for a trip that was an even bigger waste of time than it was scheduled.

One of my friends, also a former coworker, reminded me of when our company bought out another. Over the years, they kept cutting deeper and deeper into the older company. The older company had some 30 buildings on a campus when we bought them, and it was now reduced to 7. A team of 3 guys were sent out to do some work on a Friday from DC to Sacramento (I think). While in flight, they were laid off. But their manager was also laid off, so no one called them. They landed, and worked all weekend, but their login access wasn't removed until Monday. When they could no longer use the VPN (which had been having unrelated connection issues all weekend), finally they called when they realized other employees could use the VPN. They were referred to their manager. His phone was going to voicemail. Then the voicemail filled up. Eventually one of them found his emergency contact info, his cell, and found out that the entire team was let go.

So here they are, stuck on the opposite coast, with no job and no way back. Not only that, they weren't going to get reimbursed for the flight there, the car rental, the hotel, the food, etc...

They had to fight for a while, but eventually, I am told, they did get plane tickets back and their trips out there were reimbursed.

In 2008, when I was in Vegas, I met an online buddy who was the IT help for MGM. He told me that during 9/11, when they grounded all the flights for a while, a LOT of people were trapped in Vegas with no way out. First people tapped out the rental car lots, then bribed cabbies, and then people actually *pooled resources to buy cars from dealerships* because Vegas was running low on all supplies (food, fuel, essentials) due to the airports being shut down along with a lot of major bridges and landmarks, (including the highway over the Hoover Dam) and it was starting to look real bleak. And no one knew when the planes would be allowed to fly again. I can't imagine the tons of business trip hell stories that must have caused. He told me, "Vegas goes dead real quick with no air travel." Luckily, flights resumed a few days later.

He told me that during 9/11, when they grounded all the flights for a while, a LOT of people were trapped in Vegas with no way out. First people tapped out the rental car lots, then bribed cabbies, and then people actually *pooled resources to buy cars from dealerships* because Vegas was running low on all supplies (food, fuel, essentials) due to the airports being shut down along with a lot of major bridges and landmarks, (including the highway over the Hoover Dam) and it was starting to look real bleak.

During the eruption of that unpronounceable volcano here in Europe similar things happened. First train tickets were gone in hours and sold on the black market for crazy prices in part. Then car rentals got very expensive suddenly and there were no rental cars to be had anymore hours later. A friend who was stuck in Paris at that time teamed up with a guy he met there who wanted to go to a similar destination. That guy eventually bought a used car for a rather high price after a day because missing out on business would be even more expensive. Of course he then sold rides for close to a third of the car price, which is where their ways parted.

Week-long cross-country trip to visit corporate HQ in NY in 2005 for a week of brainstorming meetings. A bout of insomnia coupled with strange-bed syndrome leads to me being unable to sleep at all for three days straight.

On the evening of the fourth day, I'm sitting in bed watching the news when I feel a little strange - because my heart has decided to start beating really fast for no apparent reason. Freaking out, I head down to the hotel lobby and tell them that I'm going to stay down there a while, just in case I suddenly keel over. After an hour, it subsides - at the time I thought it was a reaction to dinner, but in retrospect it was most likely an anxiety attack brought about by extreme fatigue. The good news was that I was actually able to get a few hours of sleep that night afterwards.

Next day, I head off to wonderful Newark airport for my return trip. The plane takes off, and we're in the air for an hour when suddenly the plane starts to change course and the co-pilot says "we are returning to Newark" and then adds, not particularly convincingly, "it will be a safe return flight". Did I mention that it was also the day of the first Iraqi free elections, and I'm flying on one of the routes that was hijacked on 9/11? Having no idea what's going on or whether we were going to drop out of the sky an in instant, we land 'heavy' at Newark (no fuel dump, with full fuel for cross-country flight). An ambulance greets us on the tarmack. I never found out any specifics but it seems clear the pilot had some sort of medical emergency. After about an hour delay, we take off again (never went to the gate), and thankfully the second attempt went smoothly.

He told me that during 9/11, when they grounded all the flights for a while, a LOT of people were trapped in Vegas with no way out. First people tapped out the rental car lots, then bribed cabbies, and then people actually *pooled resources to buy cars from dealerships* because Vegas was running low on all supplies (food, fuel, essentials) due to the airports being shut down along with a lot of major bridges and landmarks, (including the highway over the Hoover Dam) and it was starting to look real bleak.

During the eruption of that unpronounceable volcano here in Europe similar things happened. First train tickets were gone in hours and sold on the black market for crazy prices in part. Then car rentals got very expensive suddenly and there were no rental cars to be had anymore hours later. A friend who was stuck in Paris at that time teamed up with a guy he met there who wanted to go to a similar destination. That guy eventually bought a used car for a rather high price after a day because missing out on business would be even more expensive. Of course he then sold rides for close to a third of the car price, which is where their ways parted.

My co-workers in Amsterdam ended up with a 600 euro taxi ride (expensed, naturally). It's a good thing they were on excellent terms with their taxi driver.

About 8 years ago. Flying on a domestic flight from Abuja to Kano in northern Nigeria. It was harmattan season, when strong winds blow in dust from the sahara desert. The domestic jet (an old boeing 737 or something like it) was on approach to land, however there was a huge sand storm in progress outside - zero visibility, just blinding dust. The jet made two attempts to land, making wide arcing circles through the dust storm. In the third and final attempt the plane was so low to the ground you could almost touch the rooftops of the slums below. The problem was that the pilot didn't know where the landing strip was...we were out of alignment, and at the last moment the pilot pulled up the plane on the steepest incline I've ever experienced, the engines roared, the plane shook, all the other passengers were praying loudly by this time, many crying! My life quickly flashed before my eyes. Oh yea, this entire time, the pilots didn't give a single announcement there was a problem, which just heightened the anxiety. It didn't help that a similar jet had crashed in Kano under similar circumstances only a year or two before, killing everyone. Luckily, we were able to return to Abuja. Air travel was so dangerous in Nigeria the locals called airplanes flying coffins, I understood what they meant after that.

About 8 years ago. Flying on a domestic flight from Abuja to Kano in northern Nigeria. It was harmattan season, when strong winds blow in dust from the sahara desert. The domestic jet (an old boeing 737 or something like it) was on approach to land, however there was a huge sand storm in progress outside - zero visibility, just blinding dust. The jet made two attempts to land, making wide arcing circles through the dust storm. In the third and final attempt the plane was so low to the ground you could almost touch the rooftops of the slums below. The problem was that the pilot didn't know where the landing strip was...we were out of alignment, and at the last moment the pilot pulled up the plane on the steepest incline I've ever experienced, the engines roared, the plane shook, all the other passengers were praying loudly by this time, many crying! My life quickly flashed before my eyes. Oh yea, this entire time, the pilots didn't give a single announcement there was a problem, which just heightened the anxiety. It didn't help that a similar jet had crashed in Kano under similar circumstances only a year or two before, killing everyone. Luckily, we were able to return to Abuja. Air travel was so dangerous in Nigeria the locals called airplanes flying coffins, I understood what they meant after that.

There was a "worlds worst travel experience" essay on salon.com many moons ago, which describes a flight in a smiliar area where the pilot makes an announcement the copilot got sick, and he's flying the plane alone. But there's nothing to worry about. Then he has to go pee, but says autopilot at this altitude will take care of everything, and he'll prop the cockpit door open so he can get back in. Then, when he comes back from the lavatory, turbulence hits, and the cockpit door slams and locks shut. With him outside of it. Quick thinking by a stewardess with an axe chopped the door apart in less than a minute.

My worst business travel experience was due to an unavoidable conflict with personal travel.

It was my brother's wedding in Chile. That meant I had to fly down there, of course: not only was it my brother, but we're pretty close. The problem is that the wedding was Saturday night, and I had to be in DC on Tuesday for a conference. The conference itself wasn't an issue, but a meeting at the conference... at 8 AM on Tuesday in DC. We had carefully orchestrated the meeting with VIPs from all over the country so I'd take charge of a research project of national scope. There was no question of not showing up. Just the scheduling and negotiation had taken months.

The stage is set, then. Let us start on Thursday: my wife is already in Chile, pursuing some business interests. I pick up my two small kids from school, drive to the airport, and fly down to Santiago overnight. My kids are troopers, but I didn't get a wink of sleep anyway; they were 1.5 and 6 at the time. In a wonderful display of misogyny, the stewardesses, gate personnel, TSA, etc. all comment on how "brave" and "dedicated" I am to travel with two kids by myself. Meanwhile, the dozen single moms doing the same thing get completely ignored.

Anyway: land on Friday. Recover during the day. Sleep soundly at night. The next day is the wedding; it was fantastic. As weddings in South America go, we left pretty early. In other words, we got to bed at 4 AM or so. Kids wake up early the next day, waking me up too. On Sunday afternoon we travel to the airport, fly back to Dallas to go on to Houston. The plan is that we'll land in Houston, pick up the car, drive my wife and kids home, grab my bag, and go to the airport to travel to DC. I left plenty of time between flights for this.

So we land in Dallas on Monday morning... and immediately a pea-soup-like fog settles over the airport. The airport closes down. All flights are delayed indefinitely. We wait an hour or two, and the fog doesn't lift. I need to get to Houston to get to DC. Since this was a personal trip, work had no interest in it or flexibility; policy also was that they bought the cheapest possible tickets, so changing flights was out of the question. Finally, sleep deprived and everything, I go rent a car: I'll drive back to Houston and barely make the flight. A premium membership in some rental car agency through a credit card comes in handy, as it lets me basically commandeer a car without regard for stock or others' reservations. We go pick up our luggage.

The luggage doesn't show up. We stand in line for about an hour to beg for it. We can't leave it alone.... because the airline decrees it's not their responsibility that the flight was cancelled, therefore they won't reroute it. It'll be destroyed in Dallas if we don't pick it up. Rush it? Everyone else needs their luggage immediately, too.

We wait for two hours. I've completely blown all chances of making my flight. I call our travel agent, and switch flights... at my expense, with a $600 or so penalty (this was never reimbursed, just like the emergency car rental, which wasn't cheap). The luggage shows up two hours later, making me risk losing the latest flight I could switch to. I drive 4 hours to Houston as fast as I dare, on little sleep and with two little kids in the back. We get our car back, go home, and I rush to the other airport to just make my flight to DC.

I crash in my DC hotel at 1 AM, after five days on little to no sleep and 30 straight hours of travel. I make the meeting on time, and it was a success.

I still think it was worth it, but that was a nightmare. My current employer pays for refundable, flexible tickets, and I love it.